What is this crap about digital being bad? Digital medium is by far superior in terms of storage and preservation. Unlike analogue recording (film), which starts to degrade/change from the point it is being recorded, the digital recording is basically time-invariant. For example, the colour encoding of digital video is strictly defined, while in analogue film it varies based on the current conditions.
Of course, you might still want to use analogue film camera for some reason to shoot the film, but in any case you should digitalise the film as soon as it shot (in highest possible resolution).
Who here has lobbied for not preserving film elements digitally? As far as I can tell this conversation is all about capture mediums.
Still, I do not see why wouldn’t you immediately record it digitally. If you use analogue film to record a scene, by the time you transfer it to digital medium it will not be the same as it was originally recorded. Not to mention conditions of transformation process which requires projector (use different lighting during the projection and you have different results, etc.)
If you originally record it digitally, you have it completely preserved. You carve that digital recording into stone inside a cave and aliens will still be able to read it tens of thousands of years after we will destroy each other in the exact form as it was originally recorded.
The reason is that 35mm film still has inherently higher resolution than digital cinematography does. Each time we invent new video technologies with higher resolutions, 35 mm film still continues to surprise us by how much previously hidden detail was captured when we make updated digital scans and transfers of those film reels. However, digital photography and cinematography provides no such surprises. We know their respective resolutions from the get-go, and those remain constant despite whatever new resolutions come along with new technologies. Something shot in 4K will remain in 4K twenty to thirty years an so on. However, whenever we think we’ve wrung as much detail as modern technology possibly can from film, it always manages to catch us off guard.
Also, digital is not as robust as you make out. Film is still the go to for movie preservation as digital storage can falter or become unreadable over time. Film can last for 100+ years if properly preserved while digital only has 50+ at the most. You’d have to convert it and move it to new storage over time, but even then it can cause rot (the term is ‘bit rot’). Heck, Disney is printing it’s CURRENT films to separation masters to preserve them:
http://www.disneydigitalstudio.com/preserving-our-movies/
IF (ie, I understand there is NO proof either way we may get the OOT this year) Disney restores Star Wars, it’s gonna make a new archival master and have that and the original as back up. Star Wars is gonna end up back on film under Disney.